14 Jan 2002 ::
Here I am in Romania finally. Arrived yesterday. I haven't had such an
awful trip for ages, and I hate "Ukrzaliznytsya" (Ukranian railways) now.
It was so cold in the carriage, and I got ill. Now gotta stay at home
and take a cure.
Well... [ more.. ]

11 Aug 2002 ::
Finally, there is a report about our latest adventure called "week-end
on a seashore". Actually nobody goes to the sea just for a week-end,
but there are no limitations for such passionate explorers like yours
sincerelly... [ more.. ]

30 Jul 2001 ::
Because of DNS problems my site along with the
primary e-mail address were down for 10 days.
Dunno how many people couldn't download my
programs and how many e-mails were bounced. Well,
yesterday guys from whois.com.ua changed the zone
details at last. Great feeling... [ more.. ]

Yesterday our superia asked me to participate in the metting of new
programmers that were expected to come from Lviv to see the conditions
and then probably to come next time and join our Romanian office here.
They were supposed to make a short one-day trip. So we'd been to a
restaurant for a lunch here, then they saw the office and got their
first impressions about the software we wrote. After this in the evening
a trip to the "Viper" club was planned, which is considered to be the
best place for billiards and bowling in whole the city. However, the
guys following the best traditions proposed another way to have a good
time in the evening. The point is that they had brought several bottles
of Ukrainian vodka and salted cucumbers, so they didn't consider the
club as a good place to go. Even having in mind the company was going to
pay for it. Anyway, they reminded us of the things they'd brought and
instead of the club fun we went to one of our colleague's place, fried
so called hunters' sausages, drank and ate the cucumbers. That's what's
THE tradition is all about.

Was away for some time to prepare something to eat at the kitchen, and
found recently lost sun-glasses in ... the refrigirator. Left them in
the bag with fruits. Happens.

The spring is going on. A few days ago was going to the office in the
morning and saw the following scene. A young lady was going along the
street, and a man was going towards her. The latter was dressed very
simple, and looked like he was 50 years old or something. His clothes
were dirty, but he didn't look like a vagabond. Probably he was a
labourer. He looked at the lady very attentively, and when she appeared
behind him, he turned his back and was watching her for some time from
behind smoking a cigarette. I reminded me a joke. On a bench in a park
a student lady was sitting reading a book. A vagabond came up and sat
next to her. The vagabond looked like a real one, with unwashable tan on
his face, dressed in something stinky and torn, with a bag of the same
kind in hands. The lady continued to read not paying him even a bit of
attention. "A poor guy" - she thought - "he must be tired and sat to
have a rest here on the bench". But the vagabond got an apple from the
bag, rubbed it with his trousers and proposed it to the lady. She
refused the apple in a polite way and continued reading, and the guy ate
the apple. Then from the same bag he got a bottle filled up with a hadly
transparent liquid, shaked it and, again, proposed to the lady. Again,
she refused the proposition. Then the vagabond drank the bottle's
contents, sighed and stated: "Well, so I cannot even hope to have a blow
job".

Almost all of us go crazy in the spring, and it won't be a big frankness
to admit. So yours sincerelly decided to serf the Net to find some crazy
sites, and found the site of someone
Danya Shepovalov, who was the author of "funny" articles in the "Hacker"
magazine. Then having read the magazine I found his humor horrible. So
when I saw the site I expected to see a lot of texts about fleuts in
anals, faces covered with shit, and other stuff almost without any sense
of humour. Well, I mean it's amusing but not really ok to publish in
printed computers related editorials. However, after reading some
articles I found out that it was only a small part of his creativity.
The serie of articles about demo coders, sects research, and further
researching activities of the author make a good impression. So it's
strongly recommended. The only note, the whole site is in Russian.

The Moldavian "Zdob si Zdub"
band is continuing its victorious marching through the Romanian culture.
Being a great fan of them, yours sincerelly watching their creative
process. In fact, the guys have a very noble mission to bring the
interest in Russian language to Romania. By the way, almost all the
representatives of the old generation here learned Russian at school,
some of them for 10 years or so. However, none of them can be proud of
being able to speak it. Strange anyway that after such a period of
studies people only know several words. Once I heard a radical point of
view of one of university teachers here. He told that he didn't speak
Russian, because: a) he doesn't like Russian; b) he had learned it at
school, but cannot speak it because the lessons were obligatory. I asked
him immediately if he could count, because arithmetic was also
obligatory at school for sure. "Intelligentsia", sigh. Usual Romanian
guys (mainly old people), however, are very glad to hear someone's
speaking Russian, and then start trying to insert words they know in
Russian into their phrases.

Ok, I've lost the point a little bit. So, I keep track the recent
creation of the "Zdob si Zdub" band. In fact, I don't do fine at keeping
track of it. But sometimes the local musical channel shows their new
works. Even more, not so long ago, there was a special program about
them on the TV. It consisted of an interview interrupted with their
clips from time to time. It was amusing to hear who the vocalist of the
band was asking the guitarist in Russian how to say something in
Romanian.

The popularity of "Z&Z" is very easy to notice here. Recently with our
UN department about which I told here, consisting of Romanians, Frenchs,
Belgians, and other nationalities, we were at a concert of a local rock
band. Unfortunatelly I don't remember its name. The sound was really
good. Also I remember the vocalist who was looking like a 100% rapper.
So, the guys finished playing their own things, and got to the covers.
First the "Smoke on the water" song was played, and then guess what?
"Hai, Zdubi".

Finally, a theme from the recently mentioned "Deep Purple", named
"Pictures of Home"..

The biggest square in the Europe, the Independence square, Kharkov. The
webcam put on the
street by "Ukrtelecom".